Fridays on the Farm: The Four Seasons

Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteńas (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires)

by Astor Piazzolla   (1921 -1992)

 “Everything changes in Argentina, except the tango.” That folk saying neatly summarized the attitude that Astor Piazzolla met when he first began to introduce his revolutionary nuevo tango (“new tango”), a style that added sophisticated techniques from classical music as well as jazz influences to traditional tango. The path toward a new, revitalized art form was not easy. Piazzolla ignited a veritable culture war, which he compared to religious heresy: altering the old, calcified tango style was akin to abandoning one’s native religion for another. He was castigated in the media , criticized by the government, insulted on the street, and even threatened with bodily harm. Piazzolla was nothing if not combatively persistent, however, and over the course of decades he would eventually win the war. This year, in the 100^th anniversary of his birth, he is justly celebrated world wide as the greatest figure in the history of tango: a genius who brought the tango from its origins in the brothels, bars, and night clubs of Buenos Aires into the sanctified regions of the concert hall where his music is enthusiastically performed by artists from various traditions, including classically trained musicians. 

Born in Argentina to immigrant Italian parents, Piazzolla moved to New York at the age of three settling first in Greenwich Village. The Village was then a seething melting pot where the composer said he got into a street fight nearly every day in the Latin district. For the boy’s eighth birthday his father, a barber by trade, bought from a pawn shop a gift that would change his life forever. That gift was a bandoneon, an accordion–like instrument invented in Germany (named after the music dealer Heinrich Band) . The ironic history of this instrument was that among its principal uses in Germany was as a church instrument in parishes too poor to afford an organ or harmonium. Eventually it would be brought by German immigrants to Argentina where it became the primary instrument played in brothels and other places of ill repute, and above all, became the quintessential sonority of tango music.

Although he said that he would have preferred a baseball bat, the boy learned soon enough to play this very difficult instrument and before long was playing not only the tango music that he heard from his father’s recordings but also the music of Bach that he learned from his studies with a learned teacher who had studied with Rachmaninoff. Another influence was the jazz that he heard by such artists as Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway. Piazzolla’s reputation as a child prodigy soon attracted the attention of Carlos Gardel, a legendary figure in traditional tango and a hero to the boy’s father. Gardel invited Piazzolla, then still in his early teens, to perform with him and even gave him a part in the tango film, El Dia que me Quieras. By quirk of fate, when Gardel invited the lad to accompany him on a tour, Piazzolla’s father withheld permission on the grounds that his son was too young. Gardel and his band died in a plane crash on that tour.

At the age of 16 Piazzolla returned to Argentina and soon began the life of a busy musician, playing in various tango bands. At the same time he would continue serious studies, becoming a student of one of Latin America’s most distinguished classical composers, Alberto Ginastera. Throughout the period of his twenties, he became increasingly interested in his more serious composition, eagerly studying composers such as Ravel, Stravinsky, and Bartok. In 1953 he submitted a symphony for a composition contest which won for him a prize giving the opportunity to study in Paris with the legendary theorist and teacher Nadia Boulanger. Mlle. Boulanger’s famously rigorous instruction had long served as a finishing school for musicians from around the world. Some of the best known members of the Boulangerie, as her circle came to be called, were such figures as Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Roy Harris, Michel Legrand, Quincy Jones, and Philip Glass, to name just a few.

Piazzolla said that Nadia Boulanger was nothing less than a second mother to him. When he submitted to her some of his compositions inspired by heroes such as Bartok and Stravinsky she commented that they were well constructed but didn’t seem to represent his true artistic personality. When asked what else he did, Piazzolla played her tangos, and soon his fate was sealed. Mademoiselle, as she liked to be known, soon convinced the young composer that tango was his true métier and that he could well employ the sophisticated techniques that she was teaching (including Bach fugues!) to create a new sophisticated form of tango.

Piazzolla would return to Argentina and continue the good fight, experimenting with new forms of tango that were difficult to dance to: works that had sudden changes of mood and tempo, works that were filled with complicated jazz rhythms, works that were spiced with dissonance, and, yes, even Bachian counterpoint. Despite the vehement opposition at home he gradually  gained popularity both in Europe and in the United States. In addition to tango, he would also write chamber and orchestral music, including a Concerto for Bandoneon which demonstrated his spectacular virtuosity on that instrument. In the latter part of his life he lived in France and Italy, but often returning to Argentina.

Although Piazzolla would experiment with many different sized ensembles during his career, it is thought by many that the most successful vehicle for his concept of tango was a quintet comprising bandoneon, violin, bass, piano, and electric guitar. It is for this group that he wrote his Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. These works were conceived independently although Piazzolla did occasionally play them as a unit. The first, Buenos Aires Summer, was written in 1965 as incidental music for a play. (Piazzolla, incidentally, was a highly experienced film composer.) The other three movements were written in 1969 and 1970. 

The mention of the concept of four seasons will inevitably bring to mind even to the most casual concert goer the famous set of violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi, written c. 1717. From the time of their rediscovery in the 1930’s and 40’s, le Quattro Stagioni (The Four Seasons)   have become among the best known works in the classical repertoire and are probably the most often recorded, with some 1,000 separate recordings. In addition to their use in countless film and television scores this writer can attest to having heard them as background music in (classy) elevators, bars, and even public restrooms .  

A final connection between the seasons of Italy and those of Buenos Aires occurred in the 1990’a when the Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer, one of the most interesting artists of our day, commissioned the Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov to make an arrangement for solo violin and string orchestra of the Piazzolla works. The plan was to make a recording called Eight Seasons combining both sets of concertos. That recording , with Kremer as soloist accompanied by the crack chamber orchestra which he founded called the Kremerata Baltica, proved to be an artistic triumph and is now a classic.

Desyatnikov’s  skillful arrangement beautifully captures  both the rhythmic drive as well as the soulful nostalgia and sultry emotion of Piazzolla’s music even without the piquant, melancholy sound of the bandoneon. In several places, such as the opening of the Autumn movement the strings are asked to sound like a guiro, a Latin American percussion instrument which produces a raspy sound accomplished on the violin by bowing close to the frog. The strings are also occasionally asked to play col legno, using the wood part of the bow to create percussive effects.

One of Desyatnikov’s most brilliant and cheeky achievements is the incorporation of sections of Vivaldi’s work into Piazzolla’s original. The better the listener knows Vivaldi the more this cleverness will be appreciated. To mention several examples, the Spring movement ends with a sly, very quiet but obvious quote from the famous main theme of Vivaldi’s Spring Concerto. Less obvious perhaps will be the end of Piazzolla’s Winter which tapers off pianissimo with a charming quote employing pizzicato strings from the slow movement of Vivaldi’s Winter.

Such quotations confirm our expectations but a word of warning is necessary. Mr. Desyatnikov, being an adroit jokester, reminds us that the seasons south of the equator are reversed. We therefore should not be surprised in the middle of Summer to hear the biting chilly wind from Vivaldi’s Winter break in. True to form, the opposite happens in the Winter movement as Vivaldi’s violent summer thunderstorm appears. 

Finally, for all the sophistication of Piazzolla’s writing, the music still retains the essence of tango: an art that developed from ordinary people expressing the human condition in all its variety, from eroticism and sensuality to heart break and indescribable longing.